Money trail shows how hijackers operated

Wherever he went during his eight years in Germany, Mohamed Atta seemed to do one thing well--escape notice.

He followed German laws by registering every time he moved. He paid his bills. And he was a diligent student. His two Hamburg roommates, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, who also piloted hijacked jetliners on suicide missions Sept. 11, shared Atta's flair for the unremarkable.

German authorities, in the midst of a massive financial probe aimed at connecting the three to operatives for Osama bin Laden's terrorism network, Al Qaeda, say they believe the men were perfectly chosen for their deadly mission.

But, despite earlier reports that key pieces of the Sept. 11 terrorist plot were planned in Germany, the financial probe and other details of the men's lives have authorities convinced that it was conceived elsewhere. They also doubt speculation that Atta, suspected by many to be the ringleader among the 19 identified hijackers, chose his own accomplices in Germany.

"The risk would have been too great if the participants would have picked their own associates," a senior German intelligence official said. The current thesis is that the men were chosen for the mission by a senior bin Laden lieutenant after the mission was plotted from abroad by top bin Laden operatives.

All three of the hijackers came from comfortable Middle Eastern backgrounds that allowed them to live in Germany without significant traceable help from Al Qaeda.

Didn't fit pattern

Financial transfers now being traced in Germany appear to have involved only flight training. Each of the three enrolled in U.S. flight schools after leaving Germany. Other fund transfers in Germany that look suspicious in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks involve only small sums, the senior German intelligence official said.

"These people were clean," the official said. "They did not fit any specific pattern."

Recent press reports in the U.S., and speculation in the German press, say Atta attended a bin Laden training camp in Afghanistan. Although about 15 months of Atta's life in 1997 and 1998 remain a mystery, the senior German intelligence official said Friday that there is still no evidence linking Atta to the camps.

The three hijackers' careful steps in Hamburg included following German laws that required them to register with authorities each time they moved, including when the three began sharing an apartment on Marien Street in 1996, officials said. Atta first came to Hamburg for his studies in 1992. Al-Shehhi and Jarrah arrived in 1996.

As a citizen of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, Al-Shehhi got a monthly stipend of about $2,000 while he was a student here, authorities said. That was supplemented by occasional grants of up to about $7,000, also common for UAE students.

Atta and Jarrah received more than enough money from their families, officials said. Atta was the son of a middle-class Egyptian lawyer. Jarrah's family in Lebanon, from the Bekaa Valley village of Al Marj, was affluent enough to have a new Mercedes and a villa awaiting the return of its only son.

Still, tracking each man's finances, as well as the finances of others connected to the Hamburg three, has shed light on how the suspected terrorists operated.

Logistics man

Records of rental payments provide a link to a potentially significant suspect. Said Bahaji, 26, a German citizen of Moroccan ancestry, shared the Marien Street apartment with at least Atta while both attended the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, officials say.

Bahaji paid the rent in his own name. When Atta transferred money to Bahaji for the payments, Atta noted in Arabic on the transfer slips that the payments were for the "house of supporters," according to prosecutors here.

Bahaji allegedly provided key logistical support to the Hamburg terrorists, including helping arrange passports, visas and accommodations. He is wanted on an international warrant accusing him of belonging to a terrorist group and being involved in the murder of more than 5,000 people.

Federal criminal investigators say he left for Islamabad, Pakistan, about eight days before the Sept. 11 attack.

It is not difficult to see how a young man like Bahaji could have been useful to the group. He spoke German, Arabic, French and English, federal authorities say. And, as Bahaji boasted on his own Web site, he "was very adept at using computers--a main part of his coursework," said Rudiger Bendlin, a spokesman for the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg.

In part-time jobs he held at the school after first enrolling there in 1996, Bahaji routinely used his computer skills to help tabulate and analyze student evaluations, the school said.

After the attacks, German authorities copied all the data connected to Bahaji from the Technical University's computer server, school officials said. The computers used by Bahaji hold data stretching back about two years, officials said.

Following leads

Another key suspect sought on a German arrest warrant is Ramzi Mohamed Abdullah Bin al-Shibh, 29, a citizen of Yemen who spoke Arabic and broken German.

Bin al-Shibh also lived with Bahaji and Atta on Marien Street, though he never attended Hamburg-Harburg, the school said. Instead, he was in a special school for foreign students who needed to improve their German-language skills before attending university.

One of the financial transactions under scrutiny in Germany involved Bin al-Shibh. In August 2000, according to the office of Germany's chief federal prosecutor, Bin al-Shibh transferred about $2,200 to the Florida Flight Training Center in Venice, Fla., as a down payment for instruction.

That is the same flight school later attended by Jarrah, who is believed to be the pilot of American Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania Sept. 11 after an apparent struggle between hijackers and passengers. Atta and Al-Shehhi are believed to have flown two other airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Bin al-Shibh never attended the flight school; the U.S. denied him a visa. But he gave U.S. and German investigators another lead to follow.

He has been linked to Zacarias Moussaoui, a dual French-Algerian national now being held in New York as a material witness in the U.S. investigation. After he enrolled in an Oklahoma flight school this February, Moussaoui, identified by French intelligence as a bin Laden-trained terrorist, talked by phone to Bin al-Shibh. The call was first identified by the FBI, then traced back to Bin al-Shibh by authorities in Germany, the senior intelligence official confirmed.

Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota before the attacks, on Aug. 17, after instructors at a flight school there became suspicious that the inexperienced student pilot wanted to quickly learn how to steer--but not land--a jet.